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Subject: New planetoid Huya Author: Mikebuzz [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] Date Posted: 14:21:43 08/22/03 Fri A new 'planetoid' orbiting between Neptune and Pluto has been named "Huya" after the mythical rain god of the Wayuu people of Venezuela, astronomers announced. The minor planet was found in March 2000 by Venezuelan and U.S. astronomers using a powerful telescope located at the Centre for Astronomical Studies observatory in Merida, Venezuela. The team was led by Professor Ignacio Ferrin, an astrophysicist at the University of the Andes in Colombia, and was provisionally dubbed 2000 EB173 when it was first discovered. Under the rules that govern the naming of astronomical bodies, managed by the International Astronomical Union, an association of astronomers, the object must be named after a mythological god. The tiny frozen world, which takes 248 years to orbit the Sun, is about a quarter the size of the furthest known planet from the Sun, Pluto, and one of the biggest objects to be found in our solar system since Pluto was discovered in 1930. Thousands of so-called minor planets orbit the Sun, most of them uneven-shaped asteroids beween Mars and Jupiter. Huya is second in size only to the asteroid Ceres, and at 5.91 billion km from he Sun, one of the most distant known. In March, after determining its orbit, the Venezuelan astronomers baptised the light-red planet Juya (pronouced Hoo-ya), but later changed the spelling to 'Huya' to avoid phonetic confusion in the English pronunciation of the name. "We wanted to make sure it had the connotations of a Venezuelan indigenous god," Ferrin told reporters. Temperatures on Huya's surface barely reach above -180°C, and it has a diameter of between 700 and 750 km. Ferrin said he felt like Christopher Columbus discovering uncharted lands when his team at first stumbled across the object. While the planet was unlikely to be anything but a dead, frozen world, that did not sent his enthusiasm for the possibility life might exist elsewhere in he universe. "We cannot be alone in the universe," he told reporters. "It's like thinking there is only one elephant in the jungle." [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]